cubase sx 3, 51 tracks, 96khz 24 bit, help

[joeymusicguy]

even at the highest latency settings i cannot play this song back

im not sure what there's left for me to do. freezing isnt an option as i have already freezed the tracks that will be static for the remainder of the project. my hard drive is a 300 gig SATA 7200 going through onboard SATA channel.

i have 2 gigs of ram and a amd athlon dual core 64 bit processor (2.8 ghz i think, its a 3200 i believe)

does anyone have any tips?

in vst options i have multi processing turned on, lower latency turned on, and audio priority set to HIGH (i've experimented with very high)

and in windows xp i have the computer set to optimize for background services. i have left the page file on tho.

any ideas?

oh, and it seems that my disk cache for this project is over 100%. im not sure why... i havent tested this on the firepod yet, but i think the disk cache raised when i switched to using the motu for this project.

 

[gabriel g.]

hey dude,

I´ve the same problem with my project with cubase sx3.

I´m using the mackie onyx 1640 via firewire. I think it´s something about that firewire shit.

I changed the pc and it worked very perfect.

The matter is I have service pak 2 on the problem pc and service pak 1 proffesionell on the good working.

I know this sounds very strange but it works and I dont change anything because of that. So try an older windows version.

THis is why I sometimes want to smash pc´s at my wall

 

[JeffTD]

It's a little late, but question:

Why are you using 96khz? It's going to get summed down to 44.1khz when you bounce, no?

 

[joeymusicguy]

to be honest with you, i had a situation about a year ago where my mix turned out better in 96 khz

but i just converted the entire session to 44 and everything sounds the same

thanks for the suggestions, problem solved

 

[JeffTD]

\m/ glad to help!

Andy, James, Colin (IIRC), and Neil Kernon all track/mix in 44.1/24bit - if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

The reasoning behind it, however, is that when summing down to 44.1, you can get weird artifacts and shit going on that isn't there when you just go straight from 44.1 to 44.1.

 

[carl@laruso.com]

dude..... up your latency to full..... it may unlock enough cpu

 

[everybody's x]

dude..... up your latency to full..... it may unlock enough cpu

X2

and sometimes with a firewire interface if you shut it off you can get it to unfreeze long enough to work around the problem.


and think about dithering down to 44.1

 

[gabriel g.]

to be honest with you, i had a situation about a year ago where my mix turned out better in 96 khz

but i just converted the entire session to 44 and everything sounds the same

thanks for the suggestions, problem solved

How did you fix your problem???

I want know because of my firewire problems

thanks

 

[Machinated]

i just converted the entire session to 44 and everything sounds the same

There you go Gabriel.

 

[daveotero]

I know you already fixed your problem, but in the future defraging your drive might help disk access.

 

[joeymusicguy]

for less confusion, my hard drive was fully defragged

i went ahead and defragged a few times after that because there were still white (blank) spaces between the blue (filled) spaces

even then it was still messed up

i think the issue actually lied within the Daw software (cubase sx 3), and its little quirks. sometimes it seems that opening and closing a session several times through a year, it builds up some sort of plugin history or something weird, because after i converted down to 44 and reset every channel, remixed the entire song from scratch, i was ready to track vox with 0% cpu usage (where it was 100% before).

im leaning more towards the opinion, 96khz is just a waste of space

 

[joeymusicguy]

How did you fix your problem???

I want know because of my firewire problems

thanks

if you are using cubase sx 3, go to project setup, and change your sample rate from 96 to 44, its going to ask you if you want to convert files, you need to say yes. it will ask if you want to keep source files, say keep. it will take some time to convert each wave file from 96 to 44, now its finally going to ask you if you want to keep waves in sample positions, say no (if you say yes, everything will be off time from each other)

wallah

i suggest you reset ALL channels after doing this, because all of your EQ and plugins will sound completely different on the 44khz wave files compared to the 96khz wave files that were in the tracks before the conversion (unless you go to each insert, remove it, the re-insert it. a plugin is given the project setup information when it is loaded, it will still be stuck in "96khz" mode) << thats why you reset. i also suggest saving the project and exiting cubase (after the conversion and reset). then reopening cubase and the song. otherwise, you might get some weird behavior from the GUI.

 

[sparkyness]

im leaning more towards the opinion, 96khz is just a waste of space

Yep...if you're end product is going to be 44.1 anyway there more pain than gain when you have to transfer back down. If those with far more knowledge and experience than I aren't using it, there's usually a very good reason not to.

96khz is overkill for 99.9% of those who produce audio and seems to be more of a marketing tool for hardware and software companies. Oooh wow...we've got fidelity you can't even hear man!

 

[joeymusicguy]

I know you already fixed your problem, but in the future defraging your drive might help disk access.

thanks for the tip tho, dave

btw, i really admire your work!

 

[NK]

\m/ glad to help!

Andy, James, Colin (IIRC), and Neil Kernon all track/mix in 44.1/24bit - if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

The reasoning behind it, however, is that when summing down to 44.1, you can get weird artifacts and shit going on that isn't there when you just go straight from 44.1 to 44.1.

Actually, I try not to use anything lower than 88.2/24bit if at all possible.

 

[KeithRT99]

i'm a fan of 88.2 myself, mixes sound clearer at the final product, but hardware limitations have me doing 16/44.1 almost always.

hey, neil what sample rate was Nile - AOTW done at?

 

[NK]

i'm a fan of 88.2 myself, mixes sound clearer at the final product, but hardware limitations have me doing 16/44.1 almost always.

hey, neil what sample rate was Nile - AOTW done at?

Nile was done in Pro Tools HD at 88.2/24 bit.

 

[NK]

I track and mix all my production work at 88.2/24bit. I can't hear a difference between 96k and 88.2k. I certainly CAN hear a difference between 44.1/48k and 88.2k. I prefer the much smoother top end of 88.2 by a long way.

I keep my mixes at 88.2k so I never dither have to dither down or cross-dither at any point. In mastering the full 88.2k program goes through the analogue EQ/compression/limiting stage and is then loaded in to SS. That way fidelity is assured right up to the last stage.

 

[cobhc]

and in windows xp i have the computer set to optimize for background services. i have left the page file on tho.

Again, I know you fixed your problem, but don't set the Processor Scheduling to Background Services, you're giving less CPU time to Cubase and more to Windows Services, which isn't needed unless you're running a server (very little application use). I'm suprised noone else spotted this.

 

[Soundlurker]

Not really contributing to this thread but I didn't want to make a new one for this.

My last PC upgrade was to buy a dual core intel E2180 (2.0ghz) and naturally it made a huge difference (my previous cpu was a 2.8ghz Celeron). Yesterday, I wanted to use software monitoring on a very busy project so I was going to switch to very high priority when I saw the "Multi Processing" ...duh! Now exporting takes almost half the time it took without checking that option.